[REVIEW] JAMES HORNER: A LIFE IN MUSIC AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL

A few days after the death of James Horner, Robert Folk had suggested on Facebook the idea of producing a tribute concert bringing together his closest collaborators. Three and a half years later, this concert finally took place, thanks to Avex Classics, already responsible for Titanic Live and Aliens Live. Vocalist Clara Sanabras, who worked with James Horner on For Greater Glory (2011), and legendary Irish bagpiper Eric Rigler (Braveheart, Titanic) were on stage. The collaborators Simon Rhodes, faithful sound engineer since 1998, and Joe E Rand, musical publisher on about thirty projects, were among the spectators. Sara, wife of[...]

BAFTA GURU: A CONVERSATION WITH JAMES HORNER

29 April 2015. With host Tommy Pearson and a small audience, an important 75 minutes was to unfold. It is disheartening to note that this, a typical but always insightful interview with Tommy Pearson, would be the last interview our late maestro would give before his sudden passing on June 22, 2015. With this in mind, the angelic manners of James Horner's conveyance of thought are ever more heartbreaking as he describes some of his career highlights and passions to Tommy and the audience. His wonderfully unique way thinking and speaking those thoughts will be as sorely missed as the mystical[...]

SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER - EXPANDED AND REMASTERED RELEASE

For many fans of James Horner’s music, 1993 was a high water mark, in terms of both quality and quantity, with no fewer than 13 films released that year featuring music written by James Horner. Chief among them was Horner’s score to Searching for Bobby Fischer, an intimate true story about a young chess prodigy, starring Joe Montegna as the boy’s father and Ben Kingsley and Laurence Fishburne as the boy’s opposite-ends-of-the-spectrum chess mentors. Horner’s score is simultaneously deeply intimate and exhilarating, offering us the composer’s earliest examples of accelerated piano ostinati representing the thrill of a brilliant intellect at[...]